Straight Through Hell With A Smile
by Gray Doll
Summary: "Then Patrick Jane enters her life, and it all comes rushing back." - Angsty, mild spoilers for 6x10, Jisbon


**Notes: **I've used "Annabeth" as the name of Lisbon's mother, because, well, it did make sense that Tommy would name his daughter after his dead mother and I didn't want to include a made-up name here. I should warn you though, this one's a bit angsty, and dark. So feel free to skip it if it's not your cup of tea!

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**Straight Through Hell With A Smile**

"Mom, why do you love him?" Teresa asks when she is eight, and her anger at her father is so great that her eyes are full of hot tears.

Annabeth gently wipes her daughter's eyes, and smiles; Teresa will always remember the haunted, sorrowful look on her mother's pale face. "Love is complicated, Teresa," she warns her eldest child at the time.

Teresa does not press the subject, but she remembers those words for the rest of her life.

Her father is distant and cold in her eyes. Or perhaps that is her memory, subconsciously twisted to render her father nothing short of a loveless monster, even before the tragedy that changed their lives forever.

For years she will not let herself remember the fierce arguments between herself and her father before Annabeth's death, or the stolen moments of compassion towards her and her brothers, or the gentle way he would pull their mother to his body when she came home exhausted from work. She will think only of the way he beats her and her brothers after emptying one bottle after another, or his hateful screams that pierce through the night as the children lay curled up against each other in her bed, or the sound the gun makes when he takes his own life, leaving nothing but ashes and rust behind.

"Mom, why do you love him?" Teresa asks again one day, hours after her father has shouted at her mother for something she didn't quite understand.

(She does not think that it could be her mother's fault as well, no, because she simply cannot think of her mother as anything less than perfect).

Annabeth wipes her own eyes and gives a wobbly smile; Teresa will never forget the tears that stream down her flushed cheeks. "That is not an easy question to answer, Teresa," she whispers to her daughter.

"Love is not always pretty or content. It is fierce, and stubborn, but it is only as unwavering as the person who feels it," she says. She strokes Teresa's hair with trembling fingers. "One day you will understand," she promises, and Teresa is not so certain she wants to. Especially when her mother adds, "One day, you will wonder why you do not ask your father why he loves me."

Teresa does not press the subject, but she tries to forget these words for the rest of her life.

Decades have passed and she has almost succeeded in burying the troubling words beneath countless layers of dust and neglect. Then Patrick Jane enters her life, and it all comes rushing back, like a merciless thunderstorm threatening to sweep her off her feet.

At first, she dismisses her feelings as nothing more than affection for a man who's lost everything. She does not try to deny that he has become more than just a partner to her, but she tries to convince herself that he's her friend, and that all she feels for him is the need to help him stay sane and grounded.

It's when he starts worrying about her, clinging to her, that she allows herself to admit everything she's been trying to hide since the day she met him.

She's not a fool – she knows he's well aware of her feelings for him, but she can't help but think that he can never – _will never_ – reciprocate them. Because he's in love with his dead wife, and he always will be (she doesn't even want to _try_ and change that simple fact).

It takes her years to admit to herself that she's in love. Painfully and irrevocably. Teresa doesn't have delusions of a happy ending. All she can hope for is just an ending, simple, harsh and liberating.

She can never understand why she lets him use her. Manipulate her and play with her emotions, with her life. Why she lets him make decisions for her, why she bares her soul to him despite knowing he will never do the same.

Teresa helps him, without expecting him to help her back.

She breathes life into him while he suffocates her.

She waits for him when he leaves her, cursing herself for daring to hope.

In the end, he returns, like he always does. And now it's his turn to wait, for her to abandon everything and run back into his arms (like she always does).

This time, things have changed. He smiles and he takes her out for dinner. He makes her paper frogs and watches movies with her, curled up on her timeworn couch with a cup of steaming tea in his hand.

He tells her he loves her.

And she simply can't believe him.

He'll go insane without her, that much she knows. Because she's stuck with him through hot and cold, refusing to leave his side even when he begged her to, even when _she_ begged herself to. Because she's the one who's kept him grounded all this time.

The one who went straight through hell with a smile for him, _with_ him, and managed to pull him out of the blood-red flames.

Only she was left behind to burn.

One night, she decides that she's had enough.

"Love is complicated, Teresa," her mother whispers in the back of her mind, her words fading along with the sounds of his panicked voice coming from somewhere above her as everything goes black. "One day, you will understand."


End file.
